Professor Owen says, that natural evolution, through secondary causes, "by means of slow physical and organic operations through long ages, is not the less clearly recognizable as the act of all adaptive mind, because we have abandoned the old error of supposing it to be the result[[291]] of a primary, direct, and sudden act of creational construction." ... "The succession of species by continuously operating law, is not necessarily a 'blind operation.' Such law, however discerned in the properties and successions of natural objects, intimates, nevertheless, a preconceived progress. Organisms may be evolved in orderly succession, stage after stage, towards a foreseen goal, and the broad features of the course may still show the unmistakable impress of Divine volition."
Mr. Wallace[[292]] declares that the opponents of evolution present a less elevated view of the Almighty. He says: "Why should we suppose the machine too complicated to have been designed by the Creator so complete that it would necessarily work out harmonious results? The theory of 'continual interference' is a limitation of the Creator's power. It assumes that He could not work by pure law in the organic, as He has done in the inorganic world." Thus, then, there is not only no necessary antagonism between the general theory of "evolution" and a Divine action, but the compatibility between the two is recognized by naturalists who cannot be suspected of any strong theological bias.
The very same may be said as to the special Darwinian form of the theory of evolution.
It is true Mr. Darwin writes sometimes as if he thought that his theory militated against even derivative creation.[[293]] This, however, there is no doubt, was not really meant; and indeed, in the passage before quoted and criticised, the possibility of the Divine ordination of each variation is spoken of as a tenable view. He says ("Origin of Species," p. 569), "I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of anyone;" and he speaks of life "having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one," which is more than the dogma of creation actually requires. We find then that no incompatibility is asserted (by any scientific writers worthy of mention) between "evolution" and the co-operation of the Divine will; while the same "evolution" has been shown to be thoroughly acceptable to the most orthodox theologians who repudiate the intrusion of the supernatural into the domain of nature. A more complete harmony could scarcely be desired.
But if we may never hope to find, in physical nature, evidence of supernatural action, what sort of action might we expect to find there, looking at it from a theistic point of view? Surely an action the results of which harmonize with man's reason,[[294]] which
is orderly, which disaccords with the action of blind chance and with the "fortuitous concourse of atoms" of Democritus; but at the same time an action which, as to its modes, ever, in parts, and in ultimate analysis, eludes our grasp, and the modes of which are different from those by which we should have attempted to accomplish such ends.
Now, this is just what we do find. The harmony, the beauty, and the order of the physical universe are the themes of continual panegyrics on the part of naturalists, and Mr. Darwin, as the Duke of Argyll remarks,[[295]] "exhausts every form of words and of illustration by which intention or mental purpose can be described"[[296]] when speaking of the wonderfully complex adjustments to secure the fertilization of orchids. Also, we find co-existing with this harmony a mode of proceeding so different from that of man as (the direct supernatural action eluding us) to form a stumbling-block to many in the way of their recognition of Divine action at all: although nothing can be more inconsistent than to speak of the first cause as utterly inscrutable and incomprehensible, and at the same time to expect to find traces of a mode of action exactly similar to our own. It is surely enough if the results harmonize on the whole and preponderatingly with the rational, moral, and æsthetic instincts of man.
Mr. J. J. Murphy[[297]] has brought strongly forward the evidence of "intelligence" throughout organic nature. He believes "that there is something in organic progress which mere Natural Selection among spontaneous variations will not account for," and that "this something is that organizing intelligence which guides the action of the inorganic forces, and forms structures which neither Natural Selection nor any other unintelligent agency could form."